All contemporary Nvidia solutions support PhysX, but in return some of the GPU resources are assigned to physics effects acceleration. Is it possible to avoid performance losses without adding more cards? EVGA’s answer is "yes". We in our turn will try to answer the question if there is an alternative for the owners of ATI Radeon HD solutions.

Performance in Simulators

Colin McRae: Dirt 2

We enable DirectX 11 mode for graphics cards that support it.

The game has an advanced physics engine but it has nothing to do with PhysX and cannot utilize hardware acceleration. Thus, the EVGA card has no advantage in this game while its reduced shader domain frequency makes it slower than the ordinary GeForce GTX 275: the gap is 15% at 2560x1600. The rather low results of the Radeon HD 5800 series shouldn’t be regarded as a failure. Their speed is high for playing at 2560x1600 and they offer the visually appealing DirectX 11 mode which is not supported on Nvidia’s cards.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

We use the in-game benchmarking tools that do not allow to measure the bottom frame rate. We also enable DirectX 10.1 mode for graphics cards that support it.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX falls quite far behind the ordinary GeForce GTX 275 with reference frequencies. The gap is as large as 15% at 2560x1600. However, their bottom speeds are identical at the highest resolution and the frame rates are overall high enough for comfortable play. The Radeon HD 5800 series cards are more appealing at 2560x1600 than the EVGA card which is comparable to the Radeon HD 5850 in price. In other words, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition will be a better choice for a 30-inch monitor than the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX.